Competition has not been kind; Motorola struggles to keep pace with Apple and Samsung

Yesterday, when the Interactive Data Corp. (IDC) posted its estimates of smartphone sales one company was noticeably absent from the top five of either smartphone or total phone (incl. feature phone) sales -- Motorola Mobility, Inc. (MMI).

I. Motorola Bleeds Cash Despite Having Perhaps the Best Android Out There

Things are looking pretty bad at Motorola, who on Wednesday reported a fifth straight quarter of losses. The firm pulled in a net revenue of $3.1B USD for Q1 2012, while posting an $86M USD net loss, just slightly worse than the $81M USD and $80M USD losses Motorola posted in Q1 2011 and Q4 2011, respectively.

Despite enjoying a posh position as one of the world's top three phonemakers on the world's largest smartphone operating system platform -- Android -- Motorola remains far behind South Korea Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930) and even the struggling Taiwanese phonemaker HTC Corp. (TPE:2498).

The American phonemaker's struggles come after a brief resurgence early in the Android campaign. Motorola has suffered from being unable to keep pace with Samsung and HTC in terms of marketing and having a broad high-end handset selection.

Motorola did put forward some strong product of late. One example is the Droid RAZR MAXX, the successor to one of Motorola's better recent sucesses, the Droid RAZR.

The bad news with the MAXX is that despite its whopping 12.54 watt-hour battery -- a gargantuan design near 2.5 times the capacity of Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) iPhone 4S -- Motorola only manages 8 hours of battery life (according toAnandTech), a full hour less than the iPhone 4S. The good news is that 8+ hours is more than any other Android smartphone on the market can muster.

The MAXX also places near the top of the pack in CPU performance (thanks to its Texas Instruments (TXN) OMAP 4 series CPU) and is acceptable graphics-wise thanks to the PowerVR SGX 540 GPU from Imagination Technologies plc (LON:IMG), also found in the Samsung Galaxy S with a lower clock speed.

Sanjay Jha, chairman and CEO of Motorola Mobility defended [press release] the poor performance, pointing to the outstanding RAZR MAXX as a game-changer. He states, "The introduction of RAZR MAXX marked another successful addition to the Motorola product family and contributed to our growth in smartphones. Our Home business delivered another solid quarter highlighted by improvement in year-over-year profitability. We continue to work closely with Google to complete the proposed merger during the first half of the year."

Google may be Motorola's knight in shining armor, but even the software superpower may be unable to save the troubled phonemaker. [Image Source: Not a Fertile Myrtle]

The closing remark alludes to what appears to be Motorola's current hope at this point -- to be scooped up and saved by its shining knight-in-armor Google. But Google's bid to save the damsel-in-distress phonemaker carries no guarantees of turning around the soon-to-be-unit -- it merely provides relief for shareholders.

To compete Motorola will need a lot more models like the RAZR MAXX to flesh out its rather weak Android smartphone lineup. It will also need to grow share in the world's biggest smartphone market -- China -- as most of its sales are currently isolated to the U.S.